Friday, September 30, 2016

Alternative Left
Politics, so far confined to the internet and social media, centred around advocacy of a program of protecting Western civilization from decline due to an erosion of humanist values caused by regressive leftism.

The “regressive left” is a perversion of everything an intelligent, rational and moral left should stand for.

The “regressive left” is an outgrow of all the rotten ideas of Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism (though the influence of this is a bit exaggerated), French Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, truth relativism, cultural relativism, moral relativism, divisive and extreme identity politics, Third Wave Feminism, and endless cults of victimology.

Fundamentally, there is an irrational and pathological hatred of Western civilisation on the regressive left, which manifests itself in the following:

(1) rejection of the very idea of objective empirical truth, and often of the idea of a rationally objective morality;

(2) hatred of the best principles of the Enlightenment;

(3) hatred of the best principles of Classical liberalism (such as free speech and free expression);

(4) in the Postmodernist tradition, a profoundly irrational hatred of modern science;

(5) the objectively false belief in extreme social constructivism, and the unhinged unwillingness to understand the biological influence on human nature and even behaviour;

(6) an extreme and vicious hatred of straight white men (derived to a great extent from Third Wave Feminism) and, quite frankly, a kind of bizarre anti-white racism and devaluation of Western civilisation, which is incapable of any balanced or fair analysis of the history of Western civilisation;

(7) the belief in open borders (partly because Western civilisation is seen as a horrible unmitigated evil and all white people seen as racist and evil);

(8) a cultural relativism that apologises for, and even excuses, the illiberal and regressive beliefs of non-Western people or cultures from the Third World (e.g., Islamism), and encourages blatant double standards in the treatment of people with different, minority cultures;

(9) following from (8), a hostility to the secular principles on which our civilisation is built, such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and even universal rule of secular legal systems.

(10) a regressive left multiculturalism that even seeks to smash up the social cohesion of Western nations, by demanding a de facto world of ethnic and religious segregation, parallel legal systems and increasing tensions between communities, and the very destruction of the national identities and even common languages that are absolutely necessary for any successful modern society to function properly.

So what does it mean to be pro-Western Civilisation?

Simple: it means to be opposed to all or most of these insane regressive left ideas.

It means the following:

(1) commitment to the concept of objective empirical truth, and hard thinking about how to have a rationally-grounded objective morality;

(2) defence of the best principles of the Enlightenment, such as a secular state and universal secular legal systems;

(3) defence of the best principles of Classical liberalism (such as free speech and free expression);

(4) defence of modern science and its empiricist method as the only rational way to obtain true knowledge, even if individual scientists can be fallible and some scientific disciplines can sometimes be corrupted by bad ideas;

(5) rejection of extreme social constructivism, and accepting the biological influence on human nature (such as, for example, the plain fact that men, generally speaking, are physically stronger than women);

(6) rejection of the bizarre regressive left anti-white racism and devaluation of Western civilisation. Instead, there should be honest and plain acknowledgement of crimes or immoral aspects of Western civilisation, but balanced with understanding of its many real positive aspects;

(7) rejection of cultural relativism and rejection of any excuses for illiberal and regressive beliefs of non-Western people or cultures from the Third World like Islamism. No double standards in the treatment of people with different, minority cultures;

(8) rejection of regressive left multiculturalism, and the recognition of the benefits of healthy civic nationalism, assimilation of immigrants to our values, and a society with a strong national identity, and a realistic and pragmatic understanding of the dangers of the ideological cult of “diversity” and mass immigration that can destroy social cohesion.

In short, these should be core principles of the social and cultural outlook of the Alt Left.

Note well: it’s actually not necessarily a bad thing if the right-wing parties are in power when these debt crises happen in the West, because this will help to discredit neoliberalism and conservative free market theology.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

(2) I 100% agree that Trump’s performance crashed as the debate proceeded, and Trump’s best moments were in the first 30 minutes or so on the economy.

(3) there does seem to be evidence that the popular perception was that Clinton won the debate.

(4) but a very interesting point is this: are the polls skewed by the possibility that a significant number of voters lie and are too embarrassed to say that they will vote for Trump, as suggested here?

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

So I have some suggestions for them to create a coherent political program.

First, the Alt Left needs to get a coherent economic theory. This is extremely important. I urge them to read up on why Classical Marxism is a flawed economic theory here, and why Marxism is based on the mystical labour theory of value.

At the same time, practically all other economic schools of thought from neoclassical economics (in all its forms) and Austrian economics are also charlatanry and pseudo-science.

The only real and proper economic science for a capitalist economy is Post Keynesian economics. The Alt Left should adopt this as its economic theory, quite simply because it *is* the only legitimate economic science for market economies.

There are various subschools of Post Keynesian economics, including Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), as can be seen here.

Post Keynesianism is a radical development of the theories of John Maynard Keynes, but also takes important insights from Classical Economics and the theories of the idiosyncratic Marxian Michał Kalecki.

There are all sorts of other ideas and policies that should be combined with Post Keynesian economics to produce a revitalised, rational, humane, and effective left for the 21st century, as follows:

Economics

(1) the objectives of economic policy are full employment by government fiscal policy and public investment, high wages, a tendency for real wages to rise with productivity growth, strong aggregate demand, and, ideally, a dynamic economy based on manufacturing.

(2) as in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the Alt Left should reject the myth that taxes are required to finance government spending (see the discussions here and here). Governments with their own central banks and fiat currencies are always solvent in their own currency, and there is even a case for limited Overt Monetary Financing (OMF) (or what is commonly called central bank “money printing” to finance some government spending).

(3) a fundamentally important policy to attain full employment is an MMT Job Guarantee. This is a program in which the government will offer employment to anyone ready and willing to work (but unable to find a private sector job) at a socially-acceptable minimum wage to ensure real full employment at all times.

(4) governments should generally pursue sensible protectionism and industrial policy, not only to protect their manufacturing sectors from the disaster of free trade under absolute advantage, but as the best strategy to ensure future economic growth and economic independence.

(5) governments should reject privatisation of social services and infrastructure. Instead, these sectors should be nationalised or run as public utilities and maintained by high government investment, e.g., in healthcare, education, scientific and technological R&D, infrastructure, etc. There is now even a case for limited nationalisation of certain key industries as an industrial policy.

(6) foreign ownership of public assets, infrastructure, key industries and large-scale foreign ownership of real estate should also be strongly rejected, and instead these sectors should be owned by private domestic citizens and things like infrastructure owned by governments.

(7) the banking and financial sector should be subject to severe regulation and prevented from destabilizing the economy, given its tendency to create asset bubbles and inflating the level of private debt to catastrophic levels. There is now a case for nationalisation of the commercial banking sector. For many nations, there is a case for discretionary capital controls (see here).

(8) the taxation system should be progressive, but particularly concerned with taxing parasitic rent seeking and destabilising speculative activity.

Social and Cultural Issues

(1) The Alt Left should support reasonable and sensible civil and equity women’s rights and gay rights, but strongly reject French Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, truth relativism, cultural relativism, moral relativism, SJW cults, divisive and extreme identity politics, Third Wave Feminism, and endless cults of victimology from identity politics. The combination of all these ideas has created a toxic wing of the modern left called the “regressive left,” which needs to be totally rejected.

The Alt Left should also reject extreme social constructivism and the “blank slate” view of human beings, because this is not supported by science.

(2) the Alt Left should strongly defend free speech and freedom of expression from its enemies on the right, the regressive left, and from religious conservatives.

(3) the Alt Left should support a secular state and separation of church and state, but not alienate liberal religious people.

(4) the Alt Left should continue the anti-imperialist tradition of the left, and be largely non-interventionist on foreign policy, but not isolationist.

(5) the Alt Left should oppose regressive and illiberal Islamism and religious fundamentalism, and promote the assimilation of immigrants in the West.

(6) the Alt Left needs a sane and pragmatic policy on immigration. It needs to reject mass immigration and open borders on economic, social and cultural grounds, and support sensible limits on immigration. It also needs to recognise that promoting “diversity” is not necessarily a good thing in and of itself, and that multiculturalism has serious problems (see here).

(7) the Alt Left should consider the importance of the nuclear family, promote pro-nuclear family policies and – at the very least – be open to serious and rational discussion of the breakdown of the nuclear family in the Western world, and what harm this may have done to our societies, but with humane policies free from right-wing viciousness or free market economics.

As a further point of interest, there is an interesting post over at the Samizdat blog on the various subgroups of the Alt Left here.

He divides the Alt Left or the people who are receptive to it into these categories (I have added numbers for clarity):

(1) “The Left Wing of the Alt Right” – Rabbit uses this phrase quite explicitly. They are most open to race realism and most opposed to mass immigration and Islamism but are also inclined towards some kind of economic socialism or social democracy and are otherwise put off the Alt-Right somehow or other. Strasserites might be a more explicitly national socialist variant of this, and National Bolshevism would be even more out there still. Left wing nationalism would be a softer variant of this.

(2) “Gamergate Leftists” – Named from an article I read a while back claiming that most Gamergaters were left-leaning, these are another type. These types need not be big on Gamergate per-se (the more I studied Gamergate personally, the more lost and confused I got) but being anti-feminist (at least against the kind of PC feminist theory you'd find in a women’s studies class or on any left-leaning blog) and anti-SJW is huge with them as is civil and cultural libertarianism.

I found a number of these posting on anti-SJW pages. They come to the Alt-Left usually because of a belief in Leftist economics, though they are usually not that far Left. Guys who believe in some regulation and a social safety net. Some too get put off by the tendency of anti-SJWs to drift into genuinely misogynistic and racist territory. Remember kids that SJW and social liberalism are not the same things. Think YouTubers like Sargon of Akkad or the Amazing Atheist, though they don’t use the term Alt-Left to describe themselves. Not yet, anyway. These kinds are defecting less from Richard Spencer and more from Milo Yiannopoluous. I used Gamergate’s colors in the design of my page’s logo and banner in an attempt to attract these types.

(3) “Red Enlightenment” – These are most passionate about rationalism, skepticism, empiricism and in some cases, transhumanism and futurism. Generally scientifically minded and technocratic sorts of socialists or social democrats.

(4) “True Liberals” – Antiracist and feminist supporters who think the whole thing has gotten out of hand and are concerned for the SJW’s lifestyle puritanism and opposition to free speech. They are more pro-feminist and pro-social liberal than the Gamergaters though. “The Democratic Party of the 1990s,” someone once remarked to me when I described the alt-left to them, to which I replied, “There were no liberals or Leftists in the 1990’s except myself.”

(5) “Brocialists” – Socialists or social democrats with a penchant for men’s rights and anti-misandry. I seem to have drawn a number of these to my page, and a few of my moderators fall into this category. Hillary Clinton supporters have accused Bernie Sanders of using these as his base of support. Used as a pejorative by the ‘Lorettas’ of the present day left, I’m a firm proponent that we reclaim the term.

(6) “Red Templars” – Especially and specifically anti-Islamic. We get a lot of these from Sam Harris and Bill Maher’s followings. Unlike the Left Wing of the Alt Right types, these sorts are more standard liberals otherwise.

(7) “The New Old Left” – Would dispense with race, culture and identity all together if they could and make Leftism mostly about economic Leftism. The Realist Left page and the blog Social Democracy for the 21st Century are like this. Farther left you’d find /leftypol/ on 8chan and some Marxist/Anarchist groups that reject IdPol. A whole separate entry could be made of the economic subtypes one might find on the alt left. I've also found a lot of labor nationalists and assorted 3rd positionists: mutualists, distributists, market socialists, state capitalists, syndicalism and so on.
https://samizdatchronicles.blogspot.com/2016/09/sub-types-on-alternative-left.html

Group (1) doesn’t even belong on the Alt Left at all in my view: these people belong on the Alt Right. The only exception I would make is Robert Lindsay, who seems to have some pretty controversy opinions and is extremely hostile to cultural leftism, but at least doesn’t seem motivated by Alt Right racial hatred or white supremacism.

The big-name Gamergate Leftists seem to have a strange tendency to morph into cultural libertarians or even outright libertarians, and I have noticed the same tendency amongst “True Liberals.” Both Sargon of Akkad and Dave Rubin, though I doubt either are aware of the Alt Left, seem to be morphing into Classical liberals.

I am placed in the “The New Old Left” category but the description is not right: I constantly stress the need to understand differences of culture, and to reject cultural relativism as Postmodernist irrationalism. I also strongly think the Alt Left should adopt a pragmatic view that mass immigration and open borders are actually provoking a nationalist backlash in many countries. The Left should channel this into a healthy, sensible nationalism, and recognise open borders are wrong on perfectly good economic, social and cultural grounds.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Hillary got hammered on the economy. She never clearly committed to rejecting the disaster of free trade, nor even mentioned the issue of free trade or deindustrialisation *except* when Trump raised it and in response to Trump.

In the first few minutes, Trump was all over the disaster of free trade and the catastrophe of deindustrialisation, even if he should have concentrated on protectionism rather than corporate tax policy. Trump was completely correct that Hillary supported NAFTA.

At 11.40 onwards, Hillary fails to mention that Bill Clinton’s financial deregulation is a big explanation for the financial crisis of 2008. Nor was Bill Clinton’s economy anything much but a sham driven by a stock market bubble and private debt.

Trump went on a brief rant about government debt, but private debt is the issue, not government debt.

As for Trump’s tax cuts and plans for massive infrastructure spending, this will drive the US into deep deficits and huge Keynesian stimulus – broadly speaking, precisely what is needed. Combined with trade protectionism and labour market protectionism, this is again, broadly speaking, exactly what America needs.

America could certainly do with a new progressive tax system, especially one which taxes deleterious speculative activity and parasitic rentier capitalism, but such a new tax system should only be introduced when the economy is booming and full employment is restored.

I am also rather puzzled why the issue of Hillary’s health was not raised by Trump.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Unhinged identity politics is one of the worst aspects of the modern world, and the worst is on the left.

But, you might ask, isn’t every kind of politics a form of “identity politics”? Well, yes, every type of political movement is ultimately based on some kind of identity, but this is really a trivial sense of “identity politics.”

Some “identities” and political movements based on them aren’t really a problem, and, generally speaking, tend to be a very positive force in politics, e.g.,

(1) consumer rights groups;

(2) trade unions;

(3) modest and healthy national identities and civic nationalism.

Let us take (3): a healthy form of national identity and liberal nationalism is, as I have argued here, probably one of the most important civilising forces in human history, because it can forge a successful nation out of disparate regional communities and people. Although there does need to be a strong degree of cultural compatibility and assimilation, it can work well.

The degree and type of nationalism does vary between nations, of course. But a nation which is the majority historical homeland of a given group of people is inevitably going to have a type of nationalism that binds it together, and that, generally speaking, is natural and healthy, because homogeneous societies tend to be very high trust societies.

At the same time, there is no doubt that even these types of identity politics like nationalism and even trade unions (when they, say, become ultra-far left institutions) can get out of hand. What reasonable person would deny this?

But to pretend, say, that the European nations that are the historical homelands for the Danish, Austrians, Polish, or Irish must throw their borders open to the whole world and commit demographic and cultural suicide is an unhinged idea, as Bob Rowthorn points out:

“Many nations, especially in Europe, have deep roots and their existence promotes the global diversity that cosmopolitans claim to value. Many cosmopolitans accept the right of ‘oppressed peoples,’ such as the Palestinians, to a homeland and identity, but they regard such aspirations as illegitimate when expressed by the historic majorities of western Europe. ....

Most European countries lie between the two extremes. They are not as homogeneous as Iceland, but they are also not countries of recent settlement. Although some have significant immigrant groups, they still have long-standing ethnic majorities that form the core of the nation. It is unrealistic to expect that the population of European countries will knowingly accept immigration on a scale that would transform them out of recognition. Yet this is what will happen if their governments continue to be persuaded by the claim that continued economic prosperity requires mass immigration.”
Rowthorn, R. 2003. “Migration Limits,” Prospect Magazine (February 20).
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/migrationlimits

A left given over to a type of militant irrationality that demands cultural suicide of every Western nation is doomed to total failure and will implode the left, because it is fighting against the most important and overarching form of “identity” in the modern world that really matters: national identity.

National identity has constructed powerful and successful nations out of people who were disparate. Even in Europe this is true.

Even in a nation like, say, Germany before 1871, people were divided because of hundreds of different politically independent units, different dialects of German, cultural differences and, above all, divided between a Protestant majority in the north and a Catholic majority in the south. But national identity and nation building have created Germany, and it remains the most economically powerful nation in Europe.

But modern left-wing identity politics is fundamentally flawed and goes well beyond any of the healthy forms of nationalism or identity politics listed above.

Regressive left identity politics is all about dividing people, and savagely destroying the most precious identity that matters: national social cohesion.

People are already divided on traditional conservative and left-wing disagreements on economics, social and cultural questions, but regressive left identity politics makes this far, far worse.

And, while politics on the basis of class interests has in the past been divisive, at least it has shown it has the power to do highly constructive things, like tame laissez faire capitalism.

By contrast, regressive left identity politics derives from all the rotten ideas of Postmodernism and usually entails what can only be described as paranoid conspiracy theories, e.g., about the “evil” patriarchy, straight white men, or Western civilisation in general. It is also guilty of a massive disregard for and neglect of economics and real economic justice.

Regressive left identity politics is horrendously divisive, irrational and frequently based on lies. It divides people in ways that wreck communities and, when taken to the extreme of multiculturalism, might even wreck a whole nation.

They just need to hear a different message, and wake up to the disaster of neoliberalism, the regressive left and SJW insanity, and see a different kind of left, because many of them might be lost to the populist right or Alt Right.

Add to this the angry Baby Boomers and Generation Xers sick and tired of neoliberalism, the demented cultural left, and left-wing McCarthyite political correctness, and we have a movement.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Paul Romer, recently appointed Chief Economist at the World Bank, has a stunning idea for Sweden described here. See the original article here.

According to Romer, Sweden should just allow a *completely independent* new state within Sweden, free from Swedish law where millions of migrants can live under their own laws without even being Swedish citizens. In other words, let’s just create a massive No Go Zone right in the middle of Sweden! Because these have worked so well in the rest of the Europe, haven’t they? Particularly in Sweden:

And, just when people thought Paul Romer was freeing himself from neoclassical economics, he has a genius plan to stimulate economic growth: within this No Go Zone, the migrants can be freed from minimum wage laws and have longer working hours, because, you know, wage and price flexibility leads to full employment, don’t you know!

Unfortunately for the neoclassical madmen, wage and price flexibility does not lead to full employment equilibrium, and a massive Third World enclave right in the heart of Europe is more likely to accelerate the massive catastrophe unfolding.

I don’t think enough people on the left understand the history of American conservatism. This is certainly my personal experience.

The worst elements of the George W. Bush administration were caused by the wing of the conservative movement called the Neoconservatives or “neocons.”

The older Neoconservatives gravitated from the Democratic party to the Republican party in the late 1970s, and under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were considered too extreme even by the militaristic Cold war warriors under Reagan.

In fact, in these years, the Neoconservatives were known in senior US policy circles as the “crazies” (I kid you not), as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern points out in the video below:

By the 2000s after 9/11, the “crazies” had taken control of US foreign policy. The 2003 war against Iraq was designed and driven by the Neoconservative wing of the administration of George W. Bush, and the Neoconservatives captured the support of Dick Cheney, and, through Cheney, George W. Bush himself. This illegal war was a catastrophe and the results can be seen in the Middle East today.

In the 2000s, the neoconservatives pushed a militant, almost neo-Trotskyist, neoliberalism that held that establishment of secular democracy by war in the Middle East would solve the West’s problems in that region. This policy has been a spectacular failure, again and again, whether in Iraq, Libya, and Syria – even when tried in a lesser form by Obama.

Even worse, this neocon-style foreign policy is gunning up a major – and totally unnecessary conflict – with Russia, and Hillary Clinton is on-board with this insanity.

And what about Trump? Once again the left is clueless and so stupid.

Trump has rejected the Neoconservatives, subjected them to the most incredible humiliation and even defeat, including arch-neocon Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard.

In one of those wonderfully comical moments of the campaign, Trump even took time out to bash that bloviating warmonger and neocon-sock puppet John McCain:

Trump has also repudiated the Neoconservative nation-building foreign policy, and seems to want cooperation with Russia. This is a very good thing indeed, but once again he seems to get no credit from the left.

This is going to be yet another profound social and ethical question of the 21st century, given the extraordinary developments in gene sequencing, genetic engineering, stem cell research, and IVF as described here:

The implications of the reproductive technologies described here are stunning, and profoundly disturbing.

The worshipers of free markets and libertarians should never get their way to fully privatise such technologies, because modifying the human genome could have potentially catastrophic effects.

Having said that, I am not a Luddite. If such technology is safe, it seems reasonable to use it to help people suffering from genetic disorders or genetic predispositions to diseases (and to physical or mental handicaps) to have healthy children free from those diseases, for not allowing a very carefully regulated service subject to intense government scrutiny seems cruel.

There is another controversial issue here that will set off a fierce debate: IQ.

The reproductive technologies of the future will allow parents to have higher IQ children. And you thought the plot of the movie Gattaca was far-fetched! No longer.

I find the world imagined in Gattaca a horrendous free market dystopia. There’s no way I would want that for an Alt Left / Realist Left future.

If the kind of reproductive technologies described in the article above become real, they need to be subject to:

(1) severe government regulation and ethical scrutiny;

(2) provided as a public service available to everybody, just like universal health care, and

(3) the whole world of business and employment subject to rigorous scrutiny to see that the use of gene sequencing doesn’t result in grossly unfair and socially destructive hiring practices and other unethical behvaiour.

So I think that a Social Democratic society subject to the proper policies can manage this challenge.

No massive changes to the human genome, or extreme genetic engineering should be allowed, because I can just imagine current regressive leftism, cultural leftism and transhumanist cultists would produce all sorts of insane plans to genetically change human beings.

Finally, we come to a paradoxical outcome of all this. Read what I say below in its proper context.

The issue of race and average IQ is extremely controversial and I have given my opinion here. I am afraid this has become topical again, because the Alt Right is constantly raising this issue.

I still defend what I have written in my post, especially with respect to the Third World, because I think the case for a largely environmental explanation of the various average IQ gaps is still defensible. My views on this issue are based on the work of the democratic socialist Jim Flynn (see Flynn 2008; 2009a; 2009b; 2010; 2012a; 2012b; 2013; 2016), after whom the Flynn effect is named. I think there are reasons to think that, with proper economic and social development in the Third World, an intergenerational Flynn effect will raise the average IQ of people in Third World nations towards that of the developed world.

But let us – for the sake of argument, and I stress “for the sake of argument” – grant the Alt Right race realists their theory: that there is a significant gap in the average IQ of certain racial groups owing to Darwinian evolution and genetics.

What is the Alt Left answer to this? Even if true, the solution to it does not lie in policies proposed by the Alt Right.

The solution is providing the kind of regulated reproductive technologies described above to all people, and, above all, to people at risk of having children disadvantaged by the accident of genetics, so that average IQ gaps between groups can be eliminated over time.

This does not mean that our societies will be engaged in some kind of endless, mad genetic engineering to create “superhumans” or any such thing. Rather, it would be a Social Democratic society that allows parents to have children who are not disadvantaged by genetic diseases, serious predisposition to diseases or mental disorders, handicaps, or lower than average IQ, in a system where all such reproductive technologies are intensely regulated and subject to severe ethical and social scrutiny.

So essentially: it’s game over for Alt Right race realists. Checkmate.

You are done. Your endless obsession over race and average IQ has a final, definitive answer.

In the long run, any such serious group differences, or individual differences, in IQ, in either developed nations or the Third World, can be fixed by universal health care systems that include free access to severely regulated reproductive technologies to fix this problem.

This is the answer that should be given to all Alt Right race realists.

Having engaged in this hypothetical, I hasten to say: I still defend the environmental position on group IQ gaps, and I still think it is a bad mistake for the Alt Left to get bogged down in debates with the Alt Right over race. But, as we can see, there is a perfectly good refutation of the Alt Right on race realism, even if – for the sake of argument – we grant that the latter were true.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Flynn, James R. 2008. Where Have All the Liberals Gone?: Race, Class, and Ideals in America. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York.

This article examines Britain, where it appears that between the ages of 22 and 29 women on average earn about £1,111 more per year than men of the same age. This presumably reflects the fact that (1) more women than men go to university now and (2) pro-feminist hiring practices are all the rage now too.

But why, historically, does a gap in average earnings exist and continue to exist after the age of 30?

The Third Wave Feminist propaganda holds that this is caused by the capitalist, white male, heterosexual patriarchy conspiring against women and “institutional sexism” driving women into lower paying jobs.

The major lie at the heart of this vulgar Third Wave Feminism is that women, when they do the same job and same work as men, get paid on average 77% less in their hourly wages than men do. This is a myth.

A more reasonable explanation is simply that the gap reflects (1) the different professions and career paths that women, generally speaking, freely choose, and (2) different life choices of men and women (which lead to more part-time or casual work and time out of the labour force for women).

But, if society wanted full gender equality, then women ought to be encouraged to do 50% of the work in the following professions:

(1) garbage collectors;

(2) deep sea fishermen

(3) electrical power line installers

(4) auto repair mechanics

(5) roofers

(6) heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics

(7) aircraft maintenance and service technicians

(8) firefighters

(9) construction workers

(10) miners

(11) sewage workers, and

(12) oil rig workers.

But of course these professions are mostly dominated by men, and the reasons why they are, generally speaking, dominated by men are fairly straightforward, as follows:

(1) most women shun these professions and do not wish to do them, and

(2) of the few women who might want to do them, many cannot because women – generally speaking and on average – tend to be physically less stronger than men are, and so cannot properly do these jobs anyway.

So the only real solution offered by Third Wave Feminism is to encourage women into the higher paying professions that do not require greater physical strength, and, if this fails, demand quotas and hiring practices that discriminate positively in favour of women.

But there are reasons to think even these policies might fail. Take the sciences. Despite the culture that tells girls and women that they can do anything at all, it remains difficult to get women into the sciences.

And, at the end of the day, what the drive towards such Third Wave Feminist gender equality actually means is that many men will be still be struck doing the most difficult, back-breaking, dangerous, physically demanding work in society, and women largely absent from such jobs. The feminists will be mysteriously silent about this.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

This is referring to this study here (Twenge et al. 2016), which reports on Millennial (born from 1980–1994) and iGen (born from 1995–2012) sexual behaviour.

This can be supplemented with Twenge et al. (2015).

It is useful to note the various classifications of generations as follows:

(1) Greatest Generation / G.I. Generation (born from 1900–1924);

(2) Silent Generation / Lucky Few (born from 1925–1945);

(3) Baby Boomers (born from 1946–1964);

(4) Generation X (born from 1965–1979);

(5) Millennials (born from 1980–1994);

(6) iGen (born from 1995–2012).

Both Twenge et al. (2015) and (2016) report the following about America:

(1) there was a cultural and sexual revolution from the 1960s and 1970s amongst Baby Boomers and then Generation Xers.

(2) there was rising a culture of individualism and cultural permissiveness from the 1970s to 2010s (Twenge et al. 2015: 2274–2275).

(3) in particular, the social acceptance of sex before marriage has soared, from 29% of Americans in the early 1970s, to 42% in the 1980s, 49% in the 2000s and to 55% in the 2010s (Twenge et al. 2015: 2277).

(4) paradoxically, the social acceptance of extramarital sex (sex by someone with another person who is not their married partner) has declined from 4% in 1973 to 1% in 2012 (Twenge et al. 2015: 2277).

(5) but once again, paradoxically, while the Millennials have the most permissive social attitudes to sex of any generation, they have sex with fewer partners than the Generations Xers at the same age (Twenge et al. 2015: 2281).

(6) on the basis of the GSS data (a representative sample of Americans over the age of 18), 15% of Millennials born in the 1990s have had no sexual partners after the age of 18, whereas at that age only 6% of Generation Xers had no sexual partners after the age of 18 (Twenge et al. 2016, p. 3). This fall in sexual activity is found mainly in those Millennials who did not go to university.

Why is this happening? The reasons are no doubt complex.

Amongst the proposed explanations are as follows:

(1) many American Millennials, if they marry, marry late, and many are unemployed and some even living with their parents (Twenge et al. 2016, p. 5), and so have reduced social opportunities for sex;

(2) the 1990s Millennial generation may have decreased sexual activity owing to their education on the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, but this has been questioned by other research (Twenge et al. 2016, p. 6). Alternatively, greater emphasis on promoting abstinence in the American private and public education systems and conservative culture might explain some of the trend.

(3) the increased withdrawal into a world of online social media means Millennials do not meet face to face as much as older generations and so have reduced opportunities for sex.

So, all in all, not only are Millennials the generation experiencing chronic unemployment, lack of careers and a lower marriage rate, but also increasing lack of sex as compared with Generation Xers.

Twenge, Jean M., Sherman, Ryne A. and Brooke E. Wells. 2016. “Sexual Inactivity during Young Adulthood is more common among U.S. Millennials and iGen: Age, Period, and Cohort Effects on having no Sexual Partners after Age 18,” Archives of Sexual Behavior Published online, 1 August 2016: 1–8.

Friday, September 16, 2016

But we wouldn’t know this from the unhinged cultural left, which seems to be bent on attacking every social norm in society these days.

First, some basic facts. It turns out that historical and anthropological research suggests that about 85% of human societies observed were polygamous, where men are legally or socially permitted to have more than one wife (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 657). In the last century, however, there has been a powerful development towards monogamous marriage in many countries, even where polygynous marriage was traditionally permitted.

Furthermore, monogamous marriage has certainly been the norm in the Western world for about 2,000 years.

There are many reasons to think that monogamous marriage and nuclear families make a society better and more successful than polygamous or highly promiscuous societies.

Why is monogamous marriage with the nuclear family the basis of gender equality?

It can be explained fairly easily:

(1) in a society built on monogamous marriage, the most attractive, wealthiest, or most desirable men tend, generally speaking, to pair off with the most attractive, wealthiest, most desirable women.

(2) then the moderately attractive, moderately wealthy, or moderately desirable men tend, generally speaking, to pair off with the moderately attractive, moderately wealthy, or moderately desirable women.

(3) then the least attractive, least wealthy, or least desirable men tend, generally speaking, to pair off with the least attractive, least wealthy, or least desirable women.

The gender equality here should be easy to understand: generally speaking, as long as the society is roughly made up of 50% men and 50% women who wish to marry, most people have a reasonable shot at finding a mate, who, ideally, will be their only and devoted partner.

But monogamous marriage also forces men to devote their time, energy and resources to one woman and her children by him, and vice versa.

It is also no surprise that the historical evidence suggests that monogamous marriage is more common in small-scale human societies where men are generally equal in terms of wealth or status, such as tribal or agricultural communities: a more egalitarian society tends to produce monogamous marriage (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 659), whereas as the development of societies with great economic or status inequality amongst men was associated with higher rates of polygamy. Still, some societies where economic or status inequality developed nevertheless have practised monogamous marriage (often under the influence of religion) and this seems to have clear benefits, not just confined to gender equality.

To see why monogamous marriage is the best and most important foundation of gender equality and socially superior, let us consider the only major alternative to monogamous marriage: polygamy.

What tends to happen in a polygamous society?

Once again, this can be explained fairly easily:

(1) the high status, most powerful, wealthiest men tend to monopolise women (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 657), even with and without arranged marriages, since women, generally speaking, have an innate tendency to favour high-status or wealthy men, not just highly handsome men (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 658). But, in a polygamous society, some women and their children can frequently be neglected by their husbands, who might shift their attention and care to younger, more attractive wives. This is grossly unfair to women, and, as we will see below, to men.

(2) it is more difficult even for the moderately attractive, moderately wealthy, or moderately desirable men to attract wives, as women tend to compete with other women for the high status husbands.

(3) it tends to be much more difficult for the least attractive, least wealthy, or least desirable men to attract wives.

In a polygamous society, you tend to get a pool of less wealthy, low-status unmarried men (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 662). This is grossly unfair to men.

The poor man has less chance of getting a wife, and more women will tend to live in polygamous households, where competition and social conflict arising from numerous wives and children are likely to increase.

There is also the issue of inheritance: even the rich man must divide his property and resources between multiple wives and children, and this, paradoxically, might actually decrease the per capita resources available to each individual wife and her children, as compared with having married a moderately wealthy man.

But, in a monogamous marriage society, women get one husband who is socially and legally obliged to devote all his attention and resources to his one wife and children.

There are, furthermore, many other deleterious effects of a polygamous society, as follows:

(1) a polygamous society increases intrasexual competition amongst both men and women, in ways that cause deleterious effects on society (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 660). For example, in a monogamous society, once a man is married, he is formally taken off the marriage market, as it were. In a polygamous society, by contrast, married men still remain on the marriage market and they can still compete for women (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 663). Polygamy increases the intra-household competition between the wives of one man (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 664–665). Polygamy and increased intrasexual male competition tends to cause men to strive for greater control over women, whether their sisters, wives and daughters, and to promote gender segregation (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 663). Polygamy in traditional societies also tends to drive down the average age of first marriage for females and increases spousal age gaps (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 663–664), which causes an age gap that is a form of gender inequality.

(2) the evidence suggests that polygamous societies tend to produce higher rates of intra-household personal violence and conflict and competition for resources (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 660–661, 665), because of increased social tension within such polygamous households;

(3) polygamous societies tend to produce pools of unmarried young men who gather in groups, and who cause increased public disorder, crime and violence. Young, unmarried men, for instance, take greater risks and engage in more socially undesirable behaviour (including violence) in their efforts to attract women (Pinker 2011: 125). Young, unmarried men associating in groups tend to engage in higher levels of socially undesirable behaviour such as crime, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, gambling, murder, male-on-male violence in public spaces, rape, and sexual assaults on women (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 661–662) than married men. Studies show that men’s likelihood of committing a crime falls sharply with monogamous marriage and children (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 661), so it is in the interests of society as a whole to get as many men as possible into stable marriages with children. An interesting research finding is that monogamous marriage, but not polygynous marriage, reduces a man’s testosterone levels and so lowers the propensity to violence and aggression (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 661). Even when the causes are different (that is, not because of polygamy), large groups of young, unmarried men cause social chaos in society after society. Because of sex imbalances in the population (owing to the preference for male children), both India and China had horrendous problems with crime-prone, unmarried men in gangs in the 20th century (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 662). The violence in America’s Wild West period was caused to a great extent by gangs of young, unmarried men (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 662).

(4) historical evidence suggests that polygamous societies are more prone to violence against other societies by groups of young, unmarried men for the purposes of abducting women and making them wives, concubines or sex slaves (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 663).

(5) polygamous societies tend to result in lower male parental investment in children, and in wives who become less desirable than newer, younger women (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 661).

(6) polygamous societies tend to have higher rates of abuse, neglect and homicide of children, given that polygamous households are subject to intra-household competition between genetically unrelated wives (Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012: 665). By contrast, children in monogamous nuclear families experience much lower rates of abuse, neglect and homicide.

In short, a polygamous society is objectively worse than a monogamous society, and this is in addition to our first fundamental point: that monogamous marriage is a foundation of real gender equality.

Some on the cultural left are trying to urge our societies to engage in experiments with polygamy or polyandry.

This is completely mad: our society isn’t some petri dish in a lab for unhinged cultural leftists to do experiments on.

Monogamous marriage with the nuclear family is a superior form of social organisation. And Old Leftists, sensible Social Democrats, Realist Leftists and Alt Leftists should strongly defend it. Don’t try and “fix” something that ain’t broken.

No, the cultural leftist attempt to promote polyamory and polyandry is just as stupid and unhinged. It will have the following consequences:

(1) polyandry can never be anything but some delusional feminist fantasy. There are hardly any men who would want to engage in such a practice. How many men would want to share their girlfriends or wives with other men?

(2) polyamory is just another attempt to destroy gender equality that monogamy does actually provide, and would most likely result in de facto polygamy anyway as the most attractive, wealthiest, or most desirable men attract more women as partners, because women – general speaking – are attracted to such men.

It’s just a recipe to create more groups of unattached, unhappy men who cause social chaos and a hedonist society where women call all the shots, which would probably result in fewer people finding a partner or having sex, because women will generally chase after the most attractive, most desirable, wealthiest men.

In short, cultural leftists are effectively engaged in trying to turn our sexual behaviour back to the mating patterns of the baboons and chimpanzees: that is, a world where alpha males dominate most of the females.

Furthermore, we’ve already had an experiment in promiscuous lifestyles since the 1960s. And how has it worked out?

We had a catastrophic crime wave from unmarried, young men congregating in groups in the mid-1960s, 1970s and 1980s (see Pinker 2011: 127).

(4) rejection of open borders and mass immigration, on left-wing economic, social and cultural grounds.

I would add further principles that I, personally, defend as required for a sensible left, though other people on the Alt Left might disagree:

(1) support for full employment, Keynesian macroeconomic policies and management of our economies, a high-wage economy, industrial policy, managed trade in the national interest, a humane welfare state, and an end to offshoring of manufacturing and service jobs to the Third World.

(2) the Realist Left rejects extreme social constructivism and the “blank slate” view of human beings.

(3) the Realist Left defends free speech and freedom of expression from cultural leftist and politically correct witch hunts and restrictions.

(4) the Realist Left is anti-imperialist and largely non-interventionist on foreign policy, but not isolationist.

(5) the Realist Left is pro-nuclear family and – at the very least – open to serious and rational discussion of the breakdown of the nuclear family in the Western world, and what harm this may have done to our societies.

(6) the Realist Left recognises that most people have a normal and natural wish to preserve their nations as homelands for their majority culture and their people. Low-level immigration and reasonable refugee quotas are fine, as long as minorities actually do remain a minority of the population, and people who wish to stay assimilate and do not bring hostile and incompatible cultures.

(7) the Realist Left opposes regressive and illiberal Islamism, and promotes the assimilation of immigrants in the West.